Waking Up Daughter.

Mark 5:21-43

July1, 2018

I.

Jesus and his disciples are back on their home side of the lake.  As soon as their boat hits the beach they are surrounded by a crowd of people, many of whom probably need healing.  That’s what Jesus is known for.  That’s why people come out to see him.

But among them on this day is one important man named Jairus, who is one of the leaders of the local synagogue.  Jairus bows down to Jesus according to the custom, and begs Jesus to come heal his daughter who is dying of an unknown disease.  The fact that he has to do this repeatedly indicates perhaps that Jesus was reticent to abandon all these people for the sake of one important guy.  But eventually, perhaps because he demonstrates such abject humility, Jesus decides to follow Jairus home.  So they start to make their way through all the people.  They’re trying to hurry because the girl is in such desperate condition.

Meanwhile, in the crowd there is a woman who is sick with gynecological hemorrhages that have continued non-stop for twelve years.  She is legally excluded from the community.  She has spent herself into destitution on doctors who only made her malady worse.  But hearing that Jesus is here, she convinces herself that all she has to do is touch part of his clothes, and she will be healed.  So she pushes herself through the throng until she gets close enough to Jesus so that she can stretch her arm between a couple of people and just barely feel the fabric of Jesus’ robe.

When she does this she feels immediately in her body the change.  She is healed.  The pain and discomfort disappear.  The blood stops flowing.  Something in her adjusts, firms up, and settles in.

At the same time, Jesus also feels something in his body.  He perceives “that power had gone forth from him.”  So he stops, looks around, and asks about who touched him.  To the disciples this is a ridiculous question, since they’ve been pushing their way through this mob of people.  Everybody is touching him!  

Jairus is no doubt freaking out over this unnecessary delay, as Jesus scans the crowd for the person who touched him.  Finally, the woman comes forward, also bows down before him, and tells Jesus her story.  After patiently listening, Jesus finally says to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.”  He doesn’t yell at her for delaying him or taking liberties with his powers; he doesn’t say she could have waited because he is on his way to a life and death emergency for an important man.  

He pointedly calls her “daughter” in order to place her on the same level as Jairus’ daughter, intentionally erasing the differences of class and status between the two.  The older, poor, sick woman is just as important and precious, just as much of a daughter of Israel, as the dying girl.  No one should imagine that Jesus is neglecting everyone else in order to do this favor for Jairus, the important man.

II.

Both of these people are “daughters.”  One has been sick for as long as the other has been alive, 12 years.  The number 12 represents the tribes of Israel, from which we are to infer that they stand in some sense for the nation.  Jesus has just attended to an older poor woman, apparently neglecting the girl of status and privilege.  In doing so Jesus has placed all the daughters of Israel on a level.

Jesus is still speaking to the woman when someone arrives from Jairus’ house to report that his daughter has died.  In other words, never mind, Jesus.  You’re too late.  You had to detour and take up precious time that that presumptuous old bag lady.  Now the girl, who had so many beautiful years ahead of her, is dead.

Jairus is inconsolable.  But Jesus turns to him and says, “Don’t be afraid.  Just trust me.  Like she did.”  Maybe he points to the healed woman whom everyone is beginning to blame for the girl’s passing. 

Jesus takes his three closest disciples, Peter, James, and John, and goes into the house.  The household is apoplectic with sorrow, grief, anger, remorse, and probably some denial and bargaining.  People are weeping and wailing loudly over the dead girl.  Jesus tries to calm them all down.  “Why do you make a commotion and weep?  The child is not dead but sleeping.”  So says the guy coming in off the street before he even sees the body.  So they mock his naivety and his refusal to face the cruel facts.  He’s giving false hope to Jairus, who at this point probably doesn’t know what to think.

Then Jesus kicks everyone out of the house except the girl’s parents, and he and his disciples finally go into the girl’s room.  The six people stand over her inert body.  Jesus kneels down next to her.  He takes her cold, small hand and says to her, “Little girl, arise!”  It is the same word, arise, that will be used about him when he is resurrected in chapter 16.

Mark even makes a point of giving us Jesus’ exact words, in his own Aramaic language here.  Jesus actually says, “Talitha, cum!”   

Hearing these words, the girl’s body warms, she inhales, opens her eyes, and begins to sit up.  Indeed, she gets out of bed and starts walking around, to the amazement of everyone.  Jesus instructs them to stick with the “just sleeping” story, and to feed her something.

III.

The combined story of Jesus healing an older woman and “awakening,” indeed, raising from the dead, a young woman tells us first that he is intentionally bringing women into the center of his new gospel community.  If Paul’s insight holds that we are all one in Christ, and “there is no longer male and female,” then female lives have to start mattering.  Because in his culture, as is still largely the case in ours, though not to the same extent, male lives matter more.

Thus, contrary to those who lift up out of context a few passages which seem to shove women into a subordinate role, we know from the New Testament itself that in the early church women were important leaders.  Indeed, they are the primary witnesses to Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection.      

Secondly, Jesus rejects the familiar “zero sum game” used by the establishment to keep everyone else divided against each other.  It is the lie of scarcity, which tells people there is not enough of anything to go around, therefore we have to be in conflict and competition with each other.  We only have so much, we are told, and if I give something to you it means someone else has to get less.  To help one person is to harm another.  It’s a jungle out there and you have to fend for yourself because only the strong survive.  And so on.  

The people who perpetuate this kind of falsehood tend to be sitting on hoarded, stored, regulated, and unequally distributed resources.  The more they can cause artificial “scarcity” the more valuable their stash becomes.  So when Jesus stops to engage the women who surreptitiously “steals” some power from him to heal herself, he was supposedly endangering the life of the girl who dies waiting for him.  

But Jesus is not subject to the scarcities we invent and impose on God’s world of abundance.  He dwells in the living present, worrying neither about the past nor the future.  He is the Word of God, the Way, the Truth, and the Life: he owns the past and the future.           

Thirdly, Jesus commends the woman and her faith!  She does what she needs to do, breaking laws and conventions, going against common civility, for the sake of her own healing and wholeness.  Apparently, selfishness and conniving, even stealing, are okay for poor, sick, and oppressed people.  They are unconsciously witnessing to God’s kingdom of justice and equality in which everyone gets what they need.  She shoves her way into Jesus’ presence, and he not only approves, but delays his urgent mission to the dying girl in order to reassure and praise her.

Finally, Jesus kicks out of Jairus’ household the voices of death, derision, doom, and defeat, especially when they mock the truth and his message of hope and faithfulness.  He purges the family from the home, except for the parents, and with the new family of his disciples around the bed, he brings the girl back to life.  

Life and healing cannot happen if we surround ourselves with defeatist narratives.  We are what we tell ourselves about ourselves, and if we our language only stokes our own anger and resentment, if we are ever ready to place blame and find scapegoats, if we are resigned to an unjust, unfair, existence which is “just the way it is,” then we are perpetuating the dominion of death among us.

IV.

But.  If we can adjust our attitude and our orientation and learn from, follow, trust, and obey the Lord Jesus, things will be different.  Because Jesus shows us the way things really are.  He opens our eyes to a reality which he creates at the beginning.  He shows us that we are all one together.  

In this reality, the only reality, people are not excluded because they are sick.  They are not second-class or expendable because they are female.  In this reality our inner bleeding, our remorse, our regret, our life-gone-wrong, is healed and secured.  In this reality there is plenty to go around, and we witness to fair modes of distribution based on need, not greed.  In this reality not even death can separate us from God’s love.  In this reality we give thanks to God in all circumstances, knowing that in God’s economy nothing and no one is ever lost.

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